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Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 4)

3 minutes 45 seconds

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Slide shows Key Concept 4. Slavery was an institution of power, designed to create profit for enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism.

Slavery was an institution of power and was designed to create profit for the enslavers. It was also designed to break the will of the enslaved. Historian Daina Ramey Berry describes the sale of an infant named Rachel to explore how enslaved people were commodified. Part of the "Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery" series.

Media Details

Runtime: 3 minutes 45 seconds

Slide shows Key Concept 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies.
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 1
4 minutes 2 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Slide shows Key Concept 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States.
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 2
4 minutes 49 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Slide shows Key Concept 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court, and Senate from 1787 through 1860.
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 3
4 minutes 40 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Slide shows Key Concept 4. Slavery was an institution of power, designed to create profit for enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism.
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 4
3 minutes 45 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Slide shows Key Concept 5. Enslaved people resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in both revolutionary and everyday ways.
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 5
5 minutes 32 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Slide shows Key Concept 6. The experience of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender.
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 6
5 minutes 16 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Still image from: Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 7)
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 7
4 minutes 2 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Still image from: Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 8)
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 8
4 minutes 28 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Still image from: Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 9)
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 9
4 minutes 25 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12
Still image from: Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery (Concept 10)
Teaching Hard History: A Framework for Teaching American Slavery
Episode 10
4 minutes 54 seconds
Grade Level: 7 - 12